Conservatives Begin to Fret About Rick Perry

A 14-point memo detailing the flaws in Texas Gov. Rick Perry's record is circulating among conservatives in Iowa, Politico's Molly Ball reports. Just a couple days after Perry declared he's 2012 candidacy, he sat down for an interview with a Des Moines radio station, during which the host said he'd been "deluged" with more than 150 copies of the memo. So had the station's callers.

Callers to the program confronted Perry with aggressive, statistic-filled queries about his support of an anti-cancer vaccine, his push for toll roads, conspiracy theories about a Nafta superhighway and a pan-American currency, and his attendance at a meeting of the Bilderberg Group.

The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza points to this development--among severalothers--as a sign that, in the wake of Michele Bachmann's win in the Ames straw poll and the excitement building around Perry, "smart conservatives have shifted from defending" their more conservative ideology "to warning it could sink" the Republican Party.

Example: Karl Rove is warning that when choosing their candidate, Republican need to keep in mind a familiar word, electibility:

Eight years ago, Time magazine put Howard Dean on its cover with the question, "Does Howard Dean's renegade campaign stand a chance?" For Rove, it's a happy memory that the answer was "no." Clearly he doesn't want Republicans to wind up on the other side of that experience.

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